not cheating ...
painting!
seriously, I think the willingness to change and move things around and work hard to make an image work is what takes people on from a 'Sunday painter' to a more serious one
Yes, even if they do it only on Sundays.
It is, as I see it, an important ability, to give up what you've got for something better. Not easy to avoid attaching to what we've got, even if it is not as good as we would like. I've got at least ten paintings that are not ready for framing, and a few that have been framed, that need some degree of make-over. I'm trying to muster the courage to lose what I've got in order to have something that is more gratifying, artistically. I'm doing it little by little, but it is difficult.
I definitely rework paintings. But I also sometimes let them be, and not entirely from laziness. I learn by having the bits that annoy me be close at hand.
Of course, if I fook a photo of how the painting looks before I try to improve matters, then I could 'fix' it and still have a clue what I had had there first..
Sometimes fixing kills the life of a work, it tightens everything up too much.
Also.... as I have learned from house and garden remodelling, a mistake that kills me to look at when it first happens... oh, for example, in our house in Venice, the steps were different heights, the contractor had not corrected the forms (I had pointed the discrepancy out when I checked the forms), I didn't have him re do it because it was a large and monolithic pour of concrete and basically a beautiful job. He had made the contract for less than the going rate because we had worked together before.
For the first weeks those steps annoyed the hell out of me. A few months later I had forgotten to stare at them and loved the whole porch.
So, it's complicated.
Sometimes I don't see what is wrong with a painting until years later.
Sometimes I see it and fix it while still in the process of working on it - and kill the painting with care.
Sometimes I see it and don't fix it for a year, then do fix it and... the painting improves.
Sometimes I see it and get over it, liking the painting better a few years later and having what bothered me not bother me any more.
Yes, Osso. It's a complex matter. I like what you said about how efforts to "fix" a picture can kill the life in it. That's exactly what I did last week. I ended up, as I said, gessoing the picture over and painting an entirely different image.
It depends on the imperfection. Seeing imperfections in someone elses work is often easier to appreciate because you don't know the whole process they went through, you just see the final product and like it and the imperfections make it feel genuine. But then again there are some imperfections that just make me not respect the artwork!
Quote:For the first weeks those steps annoyed the hell out of me. A few months later I had forgotten to stare at them and loved the whole porch.
Really? I'm the exact opposite. I will make something and like it...then start to notice small flaws in it and like it less and less until I am embarrased to say it was mine.
But then if I don't see it for a year and come back to it, I'll be impressed with myself and like it again
In the case of the steps, I was the designer and I had pointed out the flaws before the concrete flowed.
Still, a good concrete job is a gem, and it was, generally.
gnaw, gnaw
I got over it.
I don't think all so much real art is without quibble. Things have a direction. Not every trailing of every brush stroke has to land exactly right.
And if it did, it might land dead.
Yes, if it landed "right" that might be as good as when it lands "wrong."
Trying to fix or rework a painting is difficult. It can
be like remodelling a house. You replace the kitchen cabinets only to find afterwards that the flooring looks wrong. Then you replace the floor and realize the walls need painting....and so it goes.
I have completely changed the whole background
of a figurative painting, only to find that my
original was more compelling, more honest!
For the paintings I invest a lot of time in, I usually
draw "cartoons"......That is where I spend the
most time erasing and moving things around. This
planning does not necessarily mean that I won't
make changes when I start painting, but it does
help to reduce major reassessments.
Shepaints, you are referring to the drawing stage prior to painting? I never do that, even in figurative works. Perhaps I should. But in thinking about paintings, including abstract works, like the one I ruined last week, I might have been better off just setting some of them aside for a while. As I said elsewhere I have some works that I regret having framed. I should have let them sit a few months for a more "objective" evaluation. I did have one painting unframed and used the frame for a different work. But that was only because the frame didn't match the painting. I've got a bunch of works sitting around now, for fear of framing them prematurely. My framer assures me that it would cost me very little to unframe pictures and then, after they have been reworked, put them back in the same frames again. That degree of flexibility is comforting...like an eraser.
jln - the framing/unframing isn't a problem for most of my oil paintings as i work on canvas and don't frame them - I like them unframed best.
Yes correcting can kill a painting stone dead and has to be freely worked - but i was referring more to major changes in a work in progress than minor adjustments to a finished piece.
Of course the ability to make major changes depends on the medium - with oil it is much simpler, with watercolour it may not always be possible - with this it is much easier to kill a painting.
I think abstract or representational paintings may reflect an artist's feelings and unconscious impulses that he cannot otherwise express in another medium, e.g., words or music. One artist may express theses impulses or feelings in music, and the other in poetry or paint, but that doesn't mean the artist is aware of the meaning underneath his own images or expressions.
For instance, we may well be unaware of the true meaning and unconsciousness motivation of our own dream images, but an objective therapist may immediately interpret them correctly.
I once sat at a street art show next to a painter who, in his opinion, "will one day be recognized as a great artist." He had a long resume of his gallery exhibitions framed and mounted on the front of his canopy. One of his paintings was of an oddly-shaped human figure with very large feet standing on a table, his feet half-hanging over the edge. When a woman asked what the painting meant, he got very defensive and sarcastically shouted, "How should I know? I paint what I feel!" The poor woman just ran off. It was so obvious to me what the painting meant, since the artist had just given me a short biography of his recent life.
He said he had been an art professor at a university, and after a long period of contemplation and planning, had decided to leave the security of the university—the table—and make the leap into the unknown world of a professional artist—over the edge of the table. The artist had spent a long period vacillating between security and freedom and finally took the plunge. Now, maybe he knew the meaning of the painting, and maybe he didn't. My guess is that he didn't, because if he did he probably would have taken the painting down, if just from a feeling of self-consciousness—and it wasn't very well executed either.
Many of us, perhaps most of us, have no idea of and make no connections between our actions today and our childhood lives, so why should a painter be any different? I've been in group therapy, and I've seen over and over again, how the skilled therapist mafkes the patient become aware of deep-seated decisions the patient made in his childhood that he is totally unaware of but which still continue to strongly influence his present behavior. If his "behavior" is motivated by contemporary impusles and is acted out by means of paint, what is the difference?
For instance, a serial killer of women thinks he detests women, when, in fact, he so hated and feared his own mother at such an early age that he totally blocked it out and projected this fear and hatred onto "all women.". Now he is caught, arrested , tried, and executed, and society also fails to make the connection between the murderer's childhood and his motivation for the crimes.
Abstract art is much more difficult to interpret than representational art , difficult for the artist as well as the viewer, because the feeling and impulses of the artist never even congeal enough to form a concrete image. Imagine Barnett Newman going to a dream therapist and saying, "I have this recurring dream of red with a single verticle back line running down through it." What's the poor therapist supposed to do with that?
In Shostakovich's 7th Symphony—written in Leningrad, during its siege by lthe Germans during WWII—one movement is a variation of a theme that gets louder and louder, a la Ravel's "Bolero." Virtually all the music critics interpret this as the German advance upon the city. Shostakovich hearing this interpretation said, "bullshit, I was thinking of Stalin when I wrote it." Who was right, the critics or the composer? Who knows? Who cares? You listen to the music, and it affects you. It's not necessary that you know the artist's intentions; he doesn't necessarily know himself.
Are you saying that even the artist is sometimes unaware of his own intentions?
beautiful and thought provoking post coluber....
To me, the artist's intention is vitally
important....The whole work should reflect his or her intent, so that a change in gesture of a figure or the rearrangement of an abstract shape should serve to emphasize and reinforce the original intent.....
Turner, for example, though extremely experimental in his approach, whatever the subject matter, seemed to have an unalterable intent to capture the moods of nature....
A marine painter criticized his painting of the warship "Temeraire....as "a diaphanous spectre of mist and moonbeams, rigged with cobwebs."
Yes, Vivien, I was referring to small adjustments that don't fit in with the overall flow or character of the painting. They are like foreign agents, out of place.
I have a few paintings that I will leave unframed. Both are 24x24 works on deep stretcher bars. They look better, I suppose, without frames. But for the most part I do not like the impression of gift-wrapped packages on wrap-around paintings. It seems that the artist does not value the work enough, or that we should not value it, when he carries the painting around the sides of the picture.
JpinMilwaukee, I do think it's safe to say that intentions can come in degrees of awareness. There are unconscious as well as conscious intentions.
I do both representational as well as (and mostly) abstract and non-objective work. In my representational work, I find that my interpretations of their meaning, are often post-factum rationalizations, attempts to give the the works justificatory meanings. I sometimes think I should not even give titles to my non-objective work.
But there is another side to it. When I look at someone else's art, or when someone looks at mine, there is always a process of creative action. If someone finds a meaning in a painting of mine that I do not recognize, I accept HIS meaning as a product of HIS creative viewing. When I look at one of my own paintings and "see" something I did not see while doing the painting, I think I can accept this new viewpoint as an expression of on-going creativity--when it's not just cynical rationalization in order to make the painting more sell-able.
I have studied design (at Chouinards in Los Angeles) and as a result I tend to be very analytical when looking at other's works. But when I'm painting abstract works, I find it deadly to work analytically. That is most useful (or less deadly) in the very last stage of work (Nietzsche's Apollonian phase, following the passionate and intuitive Dionysian phase). When I am working on a painting I "follow" certain "principles" or "tastes", but usually unconsciously. Something just "looks right" or "looks wrong". And I do not stop to figure out--in terms of consciously held aesthetic principles. That would be too rigourous, resulting, indeed, in what I like to refer to as rigour mortis.
jpinMilwaukee wrote:Are you saying that even the artist is sometimes unaware of his own intentions?
Yes, I'm saying that much of the time the artist is unaware of his own intentions. He has feelings and unconsciousness impulses that drive, almost totally, the construction of an abstract painting. Even in representational painting, unless he is making a philosophical or political statement, feelings and unconsciousness impulses might may be the primary driving force. Artists have a word for this: their muse, a nebulous force that motivates and inspires them.
I'm saying that, just like most people, artists are usually unaware of their root motivations, including their creative impulses. Sure, sometimes they'll have an insight, say, on the meaning of a myth that they're able to put on the canvas, but maybe just a minority of artists, the greatest, have that combined capacity of great insight and talent.
And people interpret paintings uniquely, just as their interpret poetry uniquely.
What would be Monet's intent behind paintings waterlilies? Maybe he's just saying, why are you wasting your time looking at this picture? Get out and find some real waterlilies and look at them. Probably, he was just so overcome by their beauty that he had to paint them.
In music, for instance, did Stravinsky intend to outrage the public with his revolutionary "Rite of Spring?" I think he was aware that it would outrage the public, but was that his intent? No. His only intent was to write down the music that plagued him inside his head.
An interesting thought coluber. A good book that is sort of about that subject is "Flow: The psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Here is amazons description ofthe book:
Quote:You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is "flow," an experience that is at once demanding and rewarding--an experience that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates is one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have. The exhaustive case studies, controlled experiments and innumerable references to historical figures, philosophers and scientists through the ages prove Csikszentmihalyi's point that flow is a singularly productive and desirable state. But the implications for its application to society are what make the book revolutionary.
It is really quite an interesting read.
that sounds interesting - 'flow' - yes - when a work is going well it does flow, straight from your eyes, through your fingers and onto the canvas/paper without stopping to consciously consider sometimes.
When a friend and I paint at the coast together we know when work is getting serious - there is silence, no conversation, just intense work - and yes 'flow'. When the flow isn't there we talk more, mutter about problems with wind, cold, changing colours or stop for sandwiches and drinks
In my opinion, intent is everything. Without the artist's mindful intent, there is no authentic statement. Interpretation is a different matter.
To me it depends on the artist. If. like Picasso, they put their personal lives in their work so blatantly, then, yes.
